The invention relates to inhibiting hyphenation clusters in automated paragraph layouts.
Paragraph layout in a document production application involves selection of various format parameters so as to give the paragraph a visually pleasing appearance. Format parameters which significantly affect the aesthetic quality of a paragraph include line breaks, widow-orphan control, hyphenation, and paragraph shape. Any combination of such format parameters can cause a paragraph to have a visually unappealing appearance. It is therefore desirable to control the manner in which those formats are applied to a paragraph to ensure that the paragraph has an optimally attractive layout.
A number of techniques exist to control the impact of hyphenation on the overall appearance of a paragraph. Some text layout optimization programs eliminate the use of hyphenation altogether, but such an approach completely sacrifices the formatting flexibility afforded by hyphenation. Other programs permit the user to define the number of consecutive hyphens permitted in a paragraph layout, completely precluding the use of consecutive hyphens beyond that prescribed number. Still other programs assess format penalties based upon the total number of hyphens and the number of consecutive hyphens in a selected paragraph layout, thereby favoring paragraph layouts with the lowest hyphenation penalty.